


Scratch

by torinosu



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, kind of introspective, kind of sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 07:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20579072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torinosu/pseuds/torinosu
Summary: He skids to a stop at the kissing bridge. His heart hammers in his chest and his knife feels like a weight in his pocket.He has to check about ten times that nobody’s around before he crouches and carves a shaky R into the wood.Then the plus sign.Gently, and so faint, he scratches the E.





	Scratch

**Author's Note:**

> I went home and smashed this out immediately after seeing Chapter Two

It’s September and It’s over. Richie cycles, feels the wind in his hair and lets the sense of calm wash over him. No more missing kids, no more nightmares.

No more fucking clown.

He skids to a stop at the kissing bridge. His heart hammers in his chest and his knife feels like a weight in his pocket. Bill said something about owning their fear, and more than a room full of clowns, more than almost being eaten by the creepy Paul Bunyan statue in the centre of town, this, this is what scares him the most.

He has to check about ten times that nobody’s around before he crouches and carves a shaky R into the wood.

Then the plus sign.

Gently, and so faint, he scratches the E.

*

Eddie still looks the same. Dark hair, big, big eyes. The same worried furrow to his brow. Richie feels like he’s aged badly compared to Ben and Beverly, perhaps even Bill. They’re all married now and they’ve still got all their hair, at least.

He has a joke in his act that goes something like ‘you know an Oedipus complex always works, right? Its kid tested and mother approved'

None of them are surprised that Eddie’s ended up marrying a woman that’s just like his goddamn mother. Richie feels like being snarky about it, but every time he looks across at Eddie his mouth goes dry.

Mike tells them that the longer they stay in Derry, the more their memories will return.

Richie doesn’t know if he wants them to.

*

They sit in the hideout. The loser’s clubhouse. It’s just the two of them, Richie and Eddie. Mike’s at work with his Grandpa, Ben’s at the library like usual. Fuck knows where Bev and Bill are.

Eddie prods Richie’s face with his socked foot and Richie bats it away lazily. They’re end to end on the hammock, legs slotted together. They fit.

“Hey, so Bill and Beverly are, like, a thing, right?”

Richie shrugs, “I mean, yeah, probably”

“They kiss” Eddie says, his voice high and quick, “I’ve seen them do it”

“So?”

“I don’t know. Do you think about that kind of stuff? Girls?”

Richie can feel his heartbeat in his ears and it’s natural, the cover-up, when he says, loud even to his own ears, “I kiss your mom all the time, dude” and Eddie kicks him in the side of his head.

*

Pennywise taunts him, “I know your dirty little secret, I know your_ dirty little secret_” and all Richie can think of, other than how much this fucking clown makes him want to shit his pants, is that Eddie hates anything dirty.

*

“Do you even know how to kiss?” Eddie asks and Richie almost spits out his chips. He grins, automatic, but Eddie holds out a hand, “and shut up about my mom, okay? I’m serious”

“Have you seen the girls in this town?” Richie says, preparing himself for another hit even though his head still stings, “the clown got all the decent ones”

“That’s not funny”

Eddie pouts a little, crosses his arms, and Richie doesn’t know where to look.

“You’d need practice” He says eventually, “So you don’t disappoint your first girlfriend and she goes around calling you ‘frigid Eddie’ to all her friends”

Eddie sits up a little straighter, frowns, the hammock swings languidly, “Is that a thing that could happen?” He asks, worried.

“Girls talk, man” Richie shrugs and it’s so fake, how calm he’s being. He wants to scream.

“Fuck” Eddie says, “How am I supposed to practice?”

“You could kiss me” It slips out before Richie can stop it, and the way Eddie is staring at him makes him suddenly and violently wish he was dead, “I won’t tell anybody, and then you’ve had your first kiss and you won’t need to worry”

“Okay” Eddie says, quiet, and Richie starts to wonder if this is a dream, though it’s a lot tamer that some of the recent dreams he’s had that Eddie has starred in.

They sit up and shuffle closer, so that they’re cross-legged and facing each other in the centre of the hammock.

“Ready?” Richie asks, his heart hammering.

Eddie nods and moves forward a little, but stops, “Your glasses are in the way” he says, and Richie thinks his heart stops completely when Eddie’s cold fingers brush his cheeks and he slides his glasses off his face.

Eddie leans in a little again after he folds Richie’s glasses and places them in his own lap, and his eyes slide closed. Then Richie closes the gap and their lips brush.

Eddie pulls away far too quickly. Richie wants to chase his lips, feel that soft press again, maybe even brush his tongue along Eddie’s bottom lip, and taste him.

“That’s kind of disgusting” Eddie says, his big eyes somehow even wider, “I don’t think I want to do that with anyone, ever”

Most of Richie’s thoughts are occupied with ‘no no no no” but there’s a tiny, selfish, hopeful part of him that’s whispering “good, don’t kiss anyone but me”

His treacherous trash mouth says instead, “yeah, you’re nowhere near as good a kisser as your mom” and Eddie smacks him with his own glasses.

*

It’s September and It’s over. For real this time. They’re in the creek, watching the blood swirl away into the dark water.

“Eddie would have hated this” Ben says, past tense already, “cleaning ourselves in dirty water”

The others laugh, sadly, bitterly.

Richie’s lost his glasses. He doesn’t really care that much.

Eddie.

He wants to say it out loud, aches with it. I loved him, guys. I always did. But he feels like he doesn’t even need to, judging by the way they all hold him as he sobs.

He thinks about the boy who kissed him, and the man who died for him. He thinks about the kissing bridge and how he’s going to go there and carve R plus E with a sure hand this time.

He floats, and lets his heart break.


End file.
